Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Planet of the Apes (1968) timeline image

In yesterday's post on special relativity and space-travel I mentioned Planet of the Apes's very optimistic time-line for humans to light out to the stars (without warp drive). Here's the key image from the film that establishes what's supposedly going on:6 months ship time corresponds to ~700 years time on Earth. So how fast is the ship going? Granted the simplifying assp. that the ship's velocity is constant throughout its voyage, it's traveling ~0.999999745C.

Compare: the fastest particles ever produced in accelerators on Earth were at ~0.999999999976C, and the fastest particle ever detected was a cosmic ray proton at ~0.9999999999999999999999951C.